Day 22

The girls got up a little early today only because of the sheer excitement of visiting the Natural History Museum.  Ever since we decided to stop in New York City this year, they have been excited about this stop mostly because of seeing Night at the Museum. They asked me about every 3 minutes how much longer until we left until finally we just decided to go.  Ryan even grabbed my 10 pound backpack to carry on her back.  About halfway there I remembered I'd forgotten something so I ran back to the car only discover Ryan had my keys in the backpack. Another trip later we were now going to be late to meet Grammie and Brayden!

We got there with a huge line that was moving quite fast and took pictures before moving on to all the exhibits. It was impossible to get all of Teddy Roosevelt into the picture!  Our first stop had to be the dinosaur room so we could all see "Rexy" from the movie.  I was astounded at the sheer number of fossils they had in the dinosaur exhibit. The kids really enjoyed learning about some of the animals for each historical era of the earth.



There were so many interesting fossils and they had many that could show the evolution of all kinds of different animals, even humans! I think we could have spent a month in this museum and not seen everything!

Of course we had to get a picture with the Easter Island Head!

About halfway through the museum we decided to take a break and head to Central Park across the street. We grabbed some smoothies and I pulled out the mini soccer ball I'd gone back for so the kids could play in some open area by the benches.  Brayden was so happy to be able to run around and sweat for a few minutes!

Once they were hot, we headed back into the cool museum to finish walking through some of the exhibits. I say some because we couldn't make it through all of them! The kids decided to skip the space portion and I'm sure we still missed a few others. 

 

 

Our last stop was the ocean area where we were all amazed at the enormity of the life-sized blue whale in the room. I definitely couldn't fit all of it into a picture! This shot in no way does justice to the size of the whale. All around the room there were displays of all kinds of different ocean animals. We had fun spotting the ones in our area and learning about all kinds of other animals too!

On our way to dinner the kids were exited to see Robert Indiana's HOPE sculpture on the corner. We studied the LOVE sculpture earlier in the year so now the kids want to recreate this one too!

Thanks to the Jefferson girls for their suggestion to eat at Ellen's Stardust Diner. The kids had a blast watching and listening to all the wonderful talented staff as they serenaded our dinner and dessert! We enjoyed show tunes, 80s tunes, and current songs the whole place got into. Everyone in the restaurant belted out Bon Jovi's "Living on a Prayer" as we were leaving!

The girls and I walked home a different route to take in another view of the city before we left the next day. I was unable to capture the lights of the city as they twinkled at dusk, but it was definitely beautiful. As the sky grew dark and the city lit up, we sat and talked about our day, especially how lucky we were to have Grammie with us. Another wonderful end to a full day.